Leading goals of the Center are to facilitate the development of innovative research directions with potentially high scientific payoffby members; to assist and encourage researchers not currently engaged in research on aging to become engaged; and to encourage and facilitate the entry of new young researchers into the field. Meeting these three goals should also contribute to a fourth - to generate R01, R03, P01, and other proposals to NIA and other federal agencies. This Core, which funds pilot research projects, is the main instrument by which these goals may be achieved, and it is therefore extremely important to the success of the Center. The Core Leader will twice yearly invite the members to submit proposals, and at times solicit proposals. He will then triage them: some he will reject, some he will send back with suggestions for revision, and some he will forward as is to the administrative Core for evaluation and decision. The administrative Core will send the proposal to the Advisory Committee, who will respond by email, and if necessary discuss the proposal by phone or email. A decision will be made on whether to fund, and at what level. Once these decisions have been made, they will be communicated to the Academic Coordinator who will arrange for actual funding through the other administrative Core staff. Pilot funding recipients will provide a brief write-up of results when the project is completed. Titles and descriptions of past and on-going pilot projects will be posted on the web when they are funded. The brief write-ups of results will be posted on the CEDA website. A description of results and outcomes of the pilot projects will be included in the next annual report to NIA. Four pilot proposals are included here. The pilot projects will draw on the administrative, programming and data access resources of the administrative Core, and in some cases on the external innovative network Core for placement of data or software on the web.